


where this road is supposed to lead

by shineyma



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, F/M, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-25
Updated: 2017-10-25
Packaged: 2019-01-22 22:34:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12492308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shineyma/pseuds/shineyma
Summary: It’s not a whisper. It’s not even a thought. More the echo of a thought, or the memory of one.





	where this road is supposed to lead

**Author's Note:**

> So I got this idea for a quick little drabble and....*looks at word count, sighs* why do I even bother trying?
> 
> That said, I actually really like this fic? I'm usually pretty iffy about my writing and posting fics is generally about going "okay, I can't poke at this anymore" and posting it and NEVER looking at it again, but...I'm pleased with this one! I reread it a few times after editing and I enjoyed it. So I hope y'all enjoy it, too--and that, if you don't, you'll be kind enough not to say so.
> 
> Thanks for reading and, as always, please be gentle if you review! <3

Oh. There’s something—

“Wait,” Jemma says, and the whole team freezes.

Or, not freezes, precisely; perhaps _tenses_ would be more accurate. A stillness falls over the briefing room, but she can feel the current running beneath, caution and preparation and power stirring beneath the surface.

But what else did she feel?

“Simmons?” Coulson asks. “Is there a threat?”

A threat, yes. But—

“Not yet,” she says. “Not here.”

Some of the tension dissipates—Skye lets out a relieved breath and Fitz rocks back on his heels—but not all. Ward, of course, relaxes not a jot; his paranoia vibrates in the air, itching at her skin with _movefightact_.

Coulson and May don’t truly _relax_ , but they do settle somewhat, enough so to exchange concerned looks.

“What, then?” Coulson presses gently. “Is it somewhere else?”

“I—” Jemma closes her eyes, trying to reach, trying to _remember_ —what was it she felt? And did she feel it at all? Maybe she heard it, maybe she tasted it…there are so many ways to learn something, and they all have different implications. “I’m not sure. It’s not defined. Just…”

“A disturbance in the Force?” Skye jokes weakly. Very weakly. It was funny the first time, but after all these months on a team together—

“It’s a trap,” Jemma says, realizing it even as she speaks.

The currents in the room shift again. She can taste a bitter _notagain_ on her tongue—maybe Ward’s (he does seem to keep catching the wrong end of the traps they walk into; his ribs still haven’t healed from the last one) or Coulson’s or…really, it could be anyone’s.

They’ve been a team for less than a year and have been presented with a ridiculous number of traps. They’re all vexed by it, she’s sure.

Vexation aside, the team receives the news with equanimity. Coulson and May exchange another look—one that speaks of worry, but not disbelief. Not for the first time, Jemma is thankful that she wound up on this team and not another; there are a number of senior agents who would dismiss her words out of hand, she knows.

Not even twenty years ago, it was SHIELD’s official position that psychics didn’t exist. Telepathy and clairvoyance were for children’s tales and sci-fi movies, nothing more, and empathy was an emotion, not a power—they were sure of it.

Then came the Change, which…well, changed things.

Still, there are a number of the so-called “old guard” who still view powers like Jemma’s with considerable doubt—especially when offered something so vague.

Not Coulson, however. He’s worried, but takes her seriously as a matter of course. “Can you give us anything else?”

Jemma reaches, reaches—there’s something _there_ , she knows, and if she could just…

It’s not a whisper. It’s not even a thought. More the echo of a thought, or the memory of one. Like a word that’s just on the tip of her tongue, and if only she could _think_ —

“Is it the mission?” Ward asks, eyes narrow. “There’s something waiting for us on the train?”

Just like that, it slots into place.

“No,” she says slowly, tasting the truth in the word. She feels around the edges of the premonition, examining it from every angle now that it’s firmly in her grasp. “No, it’s Quinn.”

“Quinn is waiting for us on the train?” Fitz asks. It’s a reasonable assumption, but she can taste the aggravation beneath his words, for her and Quinn both. Fitz is often short about her powers, the one thing they don’t share—though to be fair, she tends to get annoyed with his, as well.

(Which is a perfectly reasonable response to having her work interrupted by the sizzle of his electricity, arcing through the lab and her head both, burning along her neural pathways like a virus that _doesn’t belong in a sterile environment—_

Air. She breathes it in and lets go, reminding herself that a phobia is perfectly understandable but that Fitz’s powers never bothered her before she encountered the Chitauri. And in any case, this is hardly the moment.)

“No,” she says, shaking her head to clear it. “Quinn is the trap. Or—finding him is, really.”

May straightens, sparking with surprise. “Quinn wants to be found?”

“He could’ve made it easier,” Skye grumbles, annoyed by the weeks she’s spent tracking him, but Jemma doesn’t let that distract her.

“No,” she says, yet again. (Really, it would be so much easier if they’d just let her work it out, rather than trying to make leaps and connections while she’s still puzzling over her very imprecise powers—they’re just so often _wrong_.) “Someone else wants us to find him.”

“But why?” Coulson asks—an idle query, she knows, his own way of thinking aloud, and yet she finds herself scowling at him anyway.

“I’m _trying_ to—”

“Okay,” Ward interrupts. His hand comes to rest at the small of her back, pushing _calmpatiencecalm_ at her that she _knows_ he doesn’t feel himself, the hypocrite. “You know for sure this is a future thing, right, Simmons? There aren’t trained assassins sneaking onto the Bus this very second?”

Startled by the suggestion, she reaches out almost automatically, and… “No.”

“Then why don’t we put the rest of the briefing on hold and let you work out all the details of what you’re sensing?” he suggests. “We have a few days; we can reconvene later, once you’ve got the whole story.”

Or as much of the story as she’s going to get, rather—but it’s not a bad idea.

“Right,” Coulson agrees, looking ever so slightly sheepish. “Sorry, Simmons.”

“There’s nothing to apologize for, sir,” she assures him, feeling rather sheepish herself. Or is she?

That’s the problem with keeping two empaths in close proximity; she’s projecting to him while he’s projecting to her, creating an inconvenient feedback loop every time they’re disturbed enough to let their control slip. Add to that the others’ mix of annoyance and concern, and, well…

Really, it’s a miracle she gets any premonitions at all, the amount of time she spends caught up in an emotional muddle.

“I’ll be in the Cage,” she announces, and—with an absent-minded squeeze to Skye’s hand (why did she do that? She didn’t think to at all)—flees the briefing room.

 

 

+++

 

 

Jemma was thirteen when the Change happened. She remembers it with perfect clarity—she was sitting in the grass outside the old observatory, doing one last review of her notes before going in to meet with her doctoral advisor, when a strange blue cloud descended on the entire globe.

After that, there was screaming and running and panic. Everyone tried to flee the touch of the cloud, but everyone failed. It penetrated walls, floors, barricades—even the depths of the Fridge, she learned in the Academy, saw the creeping tendrils of whatever befell the Earth that day.

The cloud fell upon them, and it wrapped around every single person on the planet—and then it disappeared, dissipating like so much mist, and left the whole world changed.

Hence the rather unimaginative name for the incident.

Everyone— _everyone_ —developed strange powers in the wake of the Change, and global chaos followed. How could it not? There was no rhyme or reason to the powers that were granted, no restrictions on age or occupation. Powers had been bestowed freely, for good and ill.

Suddenly there were warlords who could read minds and criminals who could destroy buildings with a single gesture, police officers who could smell guilt and small children who could uproot trees in protest of bedtime. The entire human race teetered on the edge of all-out destruction, just one bad day away from a complete catastrophe.

And then, after a year of fallout, SHIELD stepped into the light and imposed order. Training academies sprung up in every major city, meant to teach adults and children alike how best to control their powers; laws saw sudden revision to account for the new scope of possible crime; peace was negotiated between warring nations whether they liked it or not.

Conspiracy theories abounded, some more plausible than others—the Change was SHIELD’s doing, SHIELD was building an army, anyone with a halfway useful power would be disappeared and conscripted into service, that sort of thing.

For Jemma, who was getting strange feelings and visions and _understandings_ that she couldn’t comprehend, those whispers were terrifying at the time. Here and now, she almost wishes they were true.

If SHIELD had done this deliberately—done this at all—then surely they’d be able to provide some kind of guide for her. After fourteen years, she’s muddled her way to some kind of control, but still. Still.

They’ve walked into so many traps during their time on this team, and this is the first time she’s gotten advance warning of it. All the other times, the premonition came too late: as Ward opened a booby-trapped door, as Coulson was dragged away in handcuffs, as Mike Peterson was killed before their very eyes.

This time, for _once_ , she knows something’s coming. And yet—

“Nothing,” she says. “These powers are completely bloody useless.”

Ward, leaning in the doorway, makes a sympathetic sound. His own powers—pyrokinesis, with a side of enhanced reflexes—are much more straightforward. He once shamelessly admitted to her that he burnt his parents’ house down in the days following the Change, but it seems he hasn’t struggled since.

“Why couldn’t _I_ get something tangible?” she demands of him. “ _You_ could be clairvoyant and _I_ could start fires. Or Skye! Skye would have fun with telepathy, surely, and I’m sure being able to cause earthquakes could teach me a lot about geology—what?”

“Nothing,” Ward says, wiping the smile off his face.

“Not nothing,” she counters, and narrows her focus in on him. There’s something there, something—

“Ah,” he says, tsking, and bats her empathy away. “No peeking.”

Jemma, in a childish move she’s immediately embarrassed by, throws herself onto the Cage’s bed and pouts.

“Specialists cheat,” she complains. She knows she’s sulking, and part of her is mortified, but she simply can’t help it.

“And scientists don’t know when to quit,” he says, pushing off the doorframe. “You’re reaching too hard.”

It’s true, she realizes. Getting caught in reminiscing about the Change, complaining about her powers, pouting and sulking like a little girl…an inability to control her own moods is a textbook sign of empathic strain. Which means that she’s been reaching with her empathy instead of her clairvoyance.

And _that_ means she’s _wasted_ however many hours she’s spent here in the Cage, trying to puzzle things out.

For a moment, she’s genuinely tempted to bang her head against the wall—it has as much chance of shaking something loose as anything else—but the sudden shift of the mattress as Ward sits down distracts her.

“Come here,” he orders and, to her utter shock, drags her into his lap.

Jemma holds very, very still. “Um?”

“My SO’s clairvoyant.” Ward wraps his arms around her middle and rests his chin on her shoulder, leaving her surrounded and very, very warm. For once, she’s positive that the embarrassment and desire and breathless giddiness rising up in her chest are all completely hers. “One thing he’s taught me is that it’s easier to interpret premonitions when you’ve got something physical to focus on.”

“S-so you do this for him, do you?” she asks. Her arch tone is rather ruined by the stutter, she fears.

Ward’s chuckle rumbles through her, followed swiftly by a shiver that’s purely hers. “Not exactly. But I didn’t think you’d go for me bringing you a prostitute, so…”

Jemma sputters, caught somewhere between amusement and horror.

“You’re _joking_ ,” she says once she recovers.

“I wish,” Ward says, rather gloomily. “There are some things a guy doesn’t need to know about his surrogate father, and his sexual preferences are at the top of the list.”

Horror should probably win out, at that, but Ward sounds so _traumatized_ , Jemma can’t help but laugh. Which is awful of her, really. She’s a terrible person.

“It’s not funny,” Ward says. She can’t see his face, of course, but it tastes like he’s pouting.

Jemma laughs harder.

“Stop that,” he orders, pinching her side. “Seriously.”

She tries to stop, she really does—but she only manages to hold back for a second before a snort escapes her, after which she can do nothing to stem the tide of giggles.

“I came here to help you,” Ward says, aggrieved, “out of the goodness of my heart—”

“But you didn’t bring any prostitutes,” she points out—or tries, rather. She only gets about halfway through the word before the sheer absurdity overwhelms her once more, leaving her near-wheezing with laughter. “How am I supposed to focus without a prostitute—”

It gets funnier every time she says it, Jemma can’t breathe, she might just die from this—

And then Ward’s lips meet her neck, and like a switch has been flicked, it’s not funny at all.

Suddenly, breathing is difficult for an entirely different reason.

“You don’t need one,” he murmurs, _right there_ , his mouth brushing the shell of her ear. She swears she feels the touch of his low voice all the way to her _bones_. “I can help.”

One of his hands creeps up her stomach, just a little. It’s not far enough up to cross any boundaries, not close enough to her breasts to be truly sexual, but it’s certainly enough to _suggest_ it.

Jemma swallows—with difficulty. “That’s what you’re here for? To offer me sex?”

“It wasn’t my intention,” he says lightly. “But if you want it…”

She does. More than anything. Arousal burns through her veins, a fierce wanting that sweeps through her, that overwhelms her; she’s been half in love with him since he saved her life, and now this, the physical intimacy and his touch and his _voice_ —

And then the heat of arousal becomes a fire in her abdomen and oh, _oh_ , she knows what the trap is—

“Skye,” she gasps.

Ward stills. He says something, or maybe _asks_ something, but she can’t make it out over the roaring in her ears and the pain in her gut. It hurts, oh god does it hurt; she’d be curled in on herself if Ward weren’t holding her steady, it’s excruciating, no one could survive this—

“The trap,” she says—shuddering, clinging to his arms around her middle, nails digging in and it must hurt but she can’t stop—“it’s for her. Quinn’s going to shoot her.”

She feels him jolt, and then his arms tighten around her, painful in their force—but it’s a good pain, it’s _her_ pain, and it clears her mind enough that she hears his response.

“The _hell_ he is.”

There’s anger there, fury, and she grips it tight, clings to his anger the same way she’s clinging to him, and uses it to drag herself up and away.

_Remember what’s yours_ , she tells herself, an old mantra from the training academy. _Remember what’s yours and remember what’s not_.

What’s hers: fear, yes, but also attraction, the desire Ward was stirring in her, her feelings for him—and then her love for Skye, for Fitz, for science and fact. The heart beating in her chest is hers; so are the lungs drawing in air.

What’s not hers: fury. Pain.

She lets them go.

Slowly, the world reforms itself around her. The pain in her gut is gone; she drags in a breath and slumps back against Ward, letting her head loll against his shoulder. His fury still batters against her senses, but it’s a comforting fury—a stormy rage, fueled by his desire to protect them all.

“We can stop it,” she says, as much for her own sake as his. “We can keep Skye safe.”

“We _will_ ,” Ward corrects. His voice is even now; if she weren’t an empath—or even if she were sitting anywhere other than literally _in his lap_ —she’d never guess at the anger simmering beneath his skin.

“We will,” she agrees, relaxing further into him. Really, it will be simple enough; all they have to do is not go after Quinn. This is a future that’s easy to avert—a comforting thought.

It’s also comforting to be held by Ward. He’s so strong, so solid—and the crush she’s been nursing certainly doesn’t hurt. Still, the pain of being shot—and, worse, knowing that it was _Skye’s_ pain she was feeling—has left her shaken. As nice as it is to be sat safely in the embrace of the man she has feelings for, she needs something more than peace right now. Even comfort isn’t comfort enough.

What she _needs_ , she thinks, is a lighter subject.

And so she angles her head to look up at him, gives him her most innocent smile, and says, “And I didn’t even need a prostitute.”

He scowls down at her. “I’m never telling you anything ever again.”

“But it was obviously important information,” she points out. “What if there are other things you know that can help me?” Feeling suddenly mischievous (mood swing, ugh, just because she’s puzzled out her premonition doesn’t mean her empathic strain has disappeared), she twists to face him more easily. “How exactly did you go about finding these prostitutes? Were you able to expense their pay? Tell me every—”

“Shut up,” Ward says, and kisses her.

It’s a good kiss. A _very_ good kiss. Excellent, even.

Jemma has the fleeting thought that she should mention prostitutes around Ward as often as possible—and then she stops thinking entirely and just lets herself sink into him.

A potential disaster identified and easy to prevent, a new strategy for focusing her premonitions, _and_ an excellent kiss from Ward?

Overall, Jemma has to admit: it’s not bad for a day’s work.


End file.
